zlacker

>>richar+(OP)
I was perusing some Simpsons clips this afternoon and came across a story to the effect of "So and so didn't want to play himself, so Dan Castellaneta did the voice." It's a good impression and people didn't seem very upset about that. I am not sure how this is different. (Apparently this particular "impression" predates the Her character, so it's even easier to not be mad about. It's just a coincidence. They weren't even trying to sound like her!)

I read a lot of C&D letters from celebrities here and on Reddit, and a lot of them are in the form of "I am important so I am requesting that you do not take advantage of your legal rights." I am not a fan. (If you don't want someone to track how often you fly your private jet, buy a new one for each trip. That is the legal option that is available to you. But I digress...)

>>jrockw+wL
Surely there’s some kind of difference between “voice impression for a two-line cameo in one episode of an animated sitcom” and “reproducing your voice as the primary interface for a machine that could be used by billions of people and is worth hundreds of billions of dollars.”

Is there a name for this AI fallacy? The one where programmers make an inductive leap like, for example, if a human can read one book to learn something, then it’s ok to scan millions of books into a computer system because it’s just another kind of learning.

>>pavlov+fM
If famous actors could sue over the use of a less-famous actor that sounds just like them, what's to stop less-famous actors from suing over the use of a famous actor who sounds just like them in big-budget movies? ... and that's when you discover that "unique voice" is a one-in-a-million thing and thousands of people have the same voice, all asking for their payout.

>>yorwba+6O
> what's to stop less-famous actors from suing over the use of a famous actor who sounds just like them in big-budget movies?

Not having idiots (or ChatGPT) for judges.

>>JumpCr+yP
That's a common retort on HN but it's information free. Judges are at least theoretically and often in practice bound to follow both written law and logic, even if it yields apparently silly outcomes. The prevalence of openly political judgements in the news makes it seem like this isn't the case, but those judgements are newsworthy exactly because they are shocking and outrageous.

If voices being similar to each other is found to be grounds for a successful tort action then it'd establish a legal precedent, and it's very unlikely that precedent would be interpreted as "whoever the judge heard of first wins".

>>mike_h+WW
> it's very unlikely that precedent would be interpreted as "whoever the judge heard of first wins"

No, it's whoever's voice is famous. The voice per se isn't valuable, its fame is. Personality rights are precedented [1].

> voices being similar to each other is found to be grounds for a successful tort action then it'd establish a legal precedent

It's not about similarity. It's about property. Johansson developed her voice into a valuable asset. It's valuable because it's Scarlet Johansson's voice.

Tweeting Her explicitly tied it to Johansson, even if that wasn't the case up to that point.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights

>>JumpCr+IY
> It's valuable because it's Scarlet Johansson's voice.

I think demonstrating that this is a substantial part of the attraction of OpenAI's tech will be difficult.

>>robert+As1
>> It's valuable because it's Scarlet Johansson's voice.

> I think demonstrating that this is a substantial part of the attraction of OpenAI's tech will be difficult.

I think it's totally irrelevant if her voice "is a substantial part of the attraction of OpenAI's tech." What matters is they took something from her that was her valuable property (her likeness). It doesn't matter if what they took makes op 99% of the value or 0.00001%.

>>tivert+QP1
It does when it comes to this being a useful topic.

They didn't take her likeness; they recorded someone else. The only claim she has is that someone who sounds like her will add value to their product more than if the person didn't sound like her. At which point the question is: how much value?

(Even that isn't a claim in and of itself, of course, but it might be the basis for a "I'll make people not like you so pay me restitution from your marketing budget to avoid a court case" shakedown.)

>>robert+wy2
> They didn't take her likeness; they recorded someone else.

Those aren't mutually exclusive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midler_v._Ford_Motor_Co. Also, https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/05/sky-voice-actor-...:

> The timeline may not matter as much as OpenAI may think, though. In the 1990s, Tom Waits cited Midler's case when he won a $2.6 million lawsuit after Frito-Lay hired a Waits impersonator to perform a song that "echoed the rhyming word play" of a Waits song in a Doritos commercial. Waits won his suit even though Frito-Lay never attempted to hire the singer before casting the soundalike.

----

> The only claim she has is that someone who sounds like her will add value to their product more than if the person didn't sound like her. At which point the question is: how much value?

That may be relevant when damages are calculated, but I don't think that's relevant to the question of if OpenAI can impersonate her or not.

>>tivert+IL2
Yeah - that's an interesting case. Definitely goes against my instincts as to what should be, but case law is like that.

I suppose in this case the claim has to be something like: "They hired someone who sounds like my impersonation of a character in a film called Her".